have you found the words to save her
by darlingdearestdoll
Summary: tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway. - mergana
1. and i'll love you even more

**Rated K plus because. Just because.**

 **Summary:** Tell me every terrible thing you ever did and let me love you anyway.

 **Author's Note:** Mergana, baby. I swear I'm obsessed with this ship. And also because I have a writing list open in my phone and apparently this story is next in line so here we are

Soulmates – Reincarnation AU because I need something to tide me over with the series. And don't let me start on the characterization of Morgana, _I swear to fucking god –_

I consider this an overall angsty piece, but then again my judgment has never been that great so who knows.

 **Warning:** May be triggering, take that into consideration, kay :3

 **Disclaimer: I once asked for Mergana and look where that got me.**

* * *

 _._  
 _we're just two ghosts swimming in a glass half empty_  
 _trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat._  
 _._

* * *

 **i**

He found her on the edge of the world, an old crone with wrinkled skin and a sinister laughter that belonged in a fairytale and not real life. (And doesn't magic too?)

He found her too late – condemned guilty of witchcraft Morgana herself hadn't known existed (oh, the irony), her face burnt beyond recognition and neck snapped cleanly, the only indication left was his name scrawled messily on her collarbone; and Merlin honestly wished he had known her enough in this lifetime to mourn properly.

He found her in a bar, red dress and fuck–me pumps and youth overflowing, tiding him over, inhaling white powder and exhaling blood.

He found her every time, too soon, too late, over before they even got a chance to begin again.

Breathe in, breathe out.

* * *

 **ii**

She is young in this life, nineteen and innocent; sharp edges not quite defined yet. Morgana moves with hundreds Greek tragedies on her shoulders and an indefinable past blurry but never forgotten.

That is how he found her, sitting on a stool like her throne, ink curling and pooling on sleek shadows. She commanded attention and directed it on nimble fingers like puppeteer's strings, once a queen, always a queen. Red lips curled into a practiced smile and she looked almost like the girl he once knew, the one made from adultery and fear and love gone wrong.

(It's another chance, and he has lost count how many times he wasn't there.)

Eyes followed her as she tapped her mic. Her smile stretched into something wider, endless strings tugging and Merlin felt something shifted in the air. Morgana fixed her neck as she started. Painted lips parted, releasing slow, sultry sparks like firework shooting. It was something more than mere songs, something more than terribly cliché words as she crooned on about doomed love.

He also swore that Morgana glanced at him. But that's just a tingling thought.

The audience hummed along – approval radiating, slow and constant but definitely there. Here, in this dimly lit bar, in her stage: she was truly in her elements. Her voice blended into red velvet curtains, reverberating in waves; enchanting everyone in melodies closer to spells than songs. Piano notes folded seamlessly into her performance. For a moment, he wondered, if this was how she would have eventually grown into if given the chance. Beautiful and at peace, somewhere Morgana belonged. Sing, little songbird.

(In this half-light, perhaps. She is younger, free from burdens centuries ago. He wondered if she could have sung like this still, with weight and ideals led astray and death pulling her down like gravity. He wondered if she would go mad with all the blood in her hands once she knew. He wondered if he would regret it all; the siren with sparkles in her eyes and pearls in her hair turned murderess, goodbye sweetheart.)

She bowed her head, hair falling on oval frame of porcelain complexion. Applause roared. She spun, a little ballerina in her timeless music box. Her body dipped and bent, swan–like, her wings spread and ready to fly away. The crowd ate up her every move and Merlin had a sudden impulse to throttle all the lustful men undressing her with their eyes. (They didn't know her, didn't know her, didn't know her –)

She threw back a wink and smirked.

When he finally pulled himself out of the past, Morgana was already gone.

* * *

 **iii**

He is drawn to her again and again and again, unconsciously but always tracing back to her, all roads leads to hell. It's picturesque, in a way: him absently stirring something and her smiling an almost soft smile. It looks strange on her face, like her muscles have forgotten how to stretch that way, all marble and haughtiness pressed tightly; electricity crackling and rumbling, a thunderstorm waiting to explode; a comfortable habit to slide into.

She sings terribly cliché songs, love unrequited and forbidden feelings – who, exactly, prohibit you from eloping? Isn't this just melodrama – all the while staring into his eyes, weirdly intense gaze that makes him shiver and goose bumps raise, the calm before the storm.

She twists and twirls, a hurricane on knifepoint heels and kilometric legs; and is never idle. Morgana wanders, randomly falling into someone's arms. Tilts his chin up and moans, "I can be your china doll if you want to see me fall," how he imagines afterglow sounds like, breathy and ragged; her leg resting softly on his chair. Her neck bare to him, the tiniest edge of word and letters peeking out. Stiletto heel softly strokes up and down the length of his calf and she is mere hair's breadth from him; and the audience promptly throws catcalls. He can kiss her, if he wants to.

(He wonders if this is how she makes people fall in love with her, delicate and seductive and exotic, another time, another place; eyes like smoke and voice like heartbreak and empires falling)

Morgana laughs – a rare sound – and jumps down, circle skirt flaring and waving. Smiles her not-quite smile and smoothes her dress prettily, _doll, do you really want to fall and break?_

* * *

 **a footnote in ancient paper scrolls:**

She is art with a different name, a wild spirit, an adventuress: strange and beautiful and soul deep, something not everyone can love. She chases freedom; she craves the thrill of danger, a girl with a sweet tooth for mysteries and what comes out in the dead of the night. People whisper and glance as she glides past them, chanting her name, _Carmen, Carmen, killed by the hands of your lover_ , always always always.

* * *

 **iv**

The funny thing is, he doesn't know her in this life. Every reincarnation is different, nurture playing a hand just as important as nature in this case.

He finds her in the twilight, on the crossroad to the unknown; her silhouette cut sharp against clouds and stars. Hers is not something special, it's ingrained in him, how you always gravitate towards effortlessly towards warmth and familiarity. She sits on someone's fences, legs dangling loosely, barefoot and innocuous. Waiting for something. Anything.

"Hello," Morgana breathed.

* * *

 **v**

"You… I think I've seen you somewhere before?"

Merlin offers a shrug.

"At the bar." – A shy smile (something never changes): "I love your performances."

"Thank you."

He is awfully conscious of his big ears, Merlin finds. He scratches them awkwardly. _Good job, Merlin. Like_ that _won't draw her attention to them. You are the master of subtlety, really._

It's normal, the way she smiles tentatively. And for a while, they both are.

* * *

 **vi**

Unsurprisingly, Morgana isn't really _Morgana_ in this life but Rose, he finds. It's expected but Merlin is disappointed nonetheless.

"Sorry for not having an exotic name," she snorts into her coffee cup. "I will be sure to tell my parents that it isn't up to your standards."

"Excuse me, my name is Merlin. I have _every_ right to hate all the other names."

"Oh, I didn't know," Morgana – _Rose_ , he reminds himself – makes that strange sound, exhaling and smiling, a ghost of laughter. "Forgive me, O Great Sorcerer."

He waves his hand, the little brat that he is.

"It's alright. I am a forgiving person, you are pardoned."

"I know. I also know it's all because I'm cute." She pats his arms. "If it's any consolation, I hate my name too."

You used to hate a lot of things, hatred bright and strong and destructive and wet crimson. You hated everything and anything with a fierce passion like how you loved, and it had destroyed us all.

He drops a sugar cube into his cup, stirs. The circular motion doesn't really do anything but make his head dizzier, a time sickness, he doesn't belong here. Merlin shakes his head and laughs, dropping sugar into her cup as well.

She flinches away, only a little. It's instinctive. It's not Rose, something ancient and ugly rearing up in green eyes like rippling water, ingrained in her like the writing on her collarbone, bone deep and fine spun. The dragon's saying comes to his mind, despite himself. Hush.

She tsk-s. Her voice is strangely strained, he notes. Also unsurprising, really.

"… I don't like sweet things."

He laughs. Exhales heavily.

"It's okay. I'm sorry."

"Just… don't go around dropping things in my cup like that, okay?"

"I understand."

 _I do._

* * *

 **interlude:**

The first Morgana died without a mourner to cry for but he couldn't leave her on earth's face, rotting flesh and bones and vultures' food; in death he didn't see _Morgana the witch_ , only Morgana, bright and vulnerable and always trying to bear the weight on the world under her shoulders, silly girl, it's not yours to take, (and on her grave written the saddest words: she tried.) He wept for them both, brother and sister and then enemies; for something so short-lived and beautiful, for the world may never know how majestic and right they would be again and because everyone would celebrate a foe's death and none would remember the red rose with genteel hair and a fiery temper. He cried for them until his eye sockets burnt and there was nothing left but ashes and blood and then some.

* * *

 **vii**

Before he knows what is happening, she is sobbing into his shoulders, dampening his shirt with tears. Merlin trembles, his hands brush her hair, trying to comfort.

"You do have awful timing, just so you know." She hiccups. It's without bite. He doesn't know her, but he has met her before, another lifetime, another place. When he breathes, he smells apple and musk, staggeringly clear.

"Is it a bad dream?"

She nods, the memories still fresh and tearing at her throat. Rose sinks deeper into him, trusting. (Don't you know it's the first step toward betrayal?)

"I don't… know what is happening… They are just so maddening, and I, I've never gotten them this often." He notes the angry crescents bubbling like hot lava on her wrists. I'm sorry, he screams but his mouth never makes a sound. It's me, it's me, it's the trigger, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry –

And the choice is in your palms. Hieroglyphs and constellation trail on their joined skin, a mismatched puzzle all jaded egdes, a writing older than magic itself. Trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat.

He counts his breath, her hands on his ribcages, fitting against the place between his bones; dares to say what has been locked inside for centuries, and the world falls perfectly into pieces.

* * *

 **viii**

(He watches her warily. He watches as her expression turn from disbelief to apprehensive and finally settle on angry. He watches her straighten her back and life drain out like rainwater. He watches history unravel and thinks, _finally_.)

* * *

 **ix**

Her smile cracks as the edges, eyelashes burgundy thick. She shakes her head and laughs her not-laughter, "So you have been playing me like a fool again, _Merlin_ ," hissing his name like poison in her veins. "And me, trusting you, falling for you again," – her eyes are abyss, bottomless and coldcoldcold, she is damnation and hell and bones marrow dried into dust, blood spurting like fine wine, "isn't it all amusing to you?"

Rose – Morgana – choked. Her hands brace on his chest and push, putting as much distance between them as possible; chartreuse eyes shining dimly, gold swirling and bursting like firework. Her bedside lamp explodes, and he thinks distantly, _déjà vu_.

She is here and nowhere, she is the diamond dust in his hourglass, the pain and bruise and colors blooming on his skin. She is the poison in his blood and the magic on his tongue, the pathological lies on the roof of his mouth and ripe strawberries on the corner of his lips, white teeth glinting in a snarl and a smile alike, a curious stir in the backstage, incandescence. She is proud and regal and then some, untamable but she looks at him like she is his. If he asked.

If he asked.

And history has been running on its course too long. History has torn them apart, has pushed them against each other. History is her name from long forgotten poems and tales, history is the lies pushed in his mouth his eyes his soul and her desperation, history is her hatred and history is the death of his golden haired king, his best friend, _I can't lose him, he's my friend_

This, Merlin snarls uncharacteristically, this, is why he can't never find happiness. Because his happiness is half gone and half history repeated, twisting and twirling and again again again one more time but expecting different results.

(No, Merlin. That's not history.

That's insanity.)

* * *

 **a distant conversation in history yet to come:**

"'When you can write your autobiography on the back of a stamp and still have room to spare, I wish to meet you.' What would your story be, I wonder."

Morgana whispers words like incantation, silence louder and clashing than shouting can ever do.

"'You betrayed me.'"

* * *

 **x**

He certainly thinks something time will never be able to wash off, like the red on his hands and the red in her eyes. She stares at him with hatred remembered and centuries worth of regret, asking the silent question. _What do you do when you don't even know yourself_ , she pleads.

 _Whatever you want to_ , he almost says but bites on his tongue instead.

Her lips curl upward, and magic roars.

( _Your determination to see goodness in people will be your own undoing_.)

* * *

 **xi**

He is guiltily vindicated about her being broken. That means he is not the only one.

She presses a knife at the hollow between his collarbones and twists. She has always preferred to leave scars; ugly deaths to match her tattered soul.

(This is pure Morgana and no Rose, no feathery eyelashes, no melancholy, no soft sweet singer to dance and chipper and make him believe in second chance.)

His skin is too tight and his bones too hollowed, like there is nothing inside. She is the chip in his soul and the tear in his lungs until it's filled with flower petals, clogging his airway, soft beautiful tragic dead –

She can kill him like this, Merlin thinks.

* * *

 **xii**

Slowly, oh so slowly slowly, Morgana drops it on the tiled floor. The knife falls with a resounding 'clang'. Wide eyes stare at him, tired, horribly confused; painting blue on his skin.

(This is Rose and no Morgana, no boiling poison inside until she bursts, no sharp, tantalizing beauty that blurs everything around it, no airy laughter and grace and passionate love hatred loathing.)

It would be easy to be in love with this version of her - Rose and Rose alone. To fall seamlessly in love with the girl that doesn't belong, born in the wrong era. It would be simple to press a kiss in her temple and waves magic in her pearls, to place garland rose in her hair and sew pearls on her skin. But he is Merlin, and Merlin never does _simple_.

(I know you are dead inside but you make me feel alive.)

* * *

 **xiii**

She claws at him, all teeth and nails, and says; _this is what you have done to me, Emrys_ , and it's repetition cycle destiny; it's not about magic anymore but personal, vengeance, torn neck and rasped voice screaming screaming screaming, _I want him dead!_

Her breath ghosts over his skin, warm. Fingers press on the writing messily scrawled on his skin, hard enough to bruise.

He has been carrying the weight of her soul forever. Broken bird, take your wings and learn to fly.

"It doesn't have to be like this." He breathes softly, defeated. Ever the optimist. "We can find another way."

Morgana thinks if she looks hard enough, she can find the cracks in his heart. She can find the fragile glue holding him up, she is holding him up from centuries of regret and self-deprecation. The vines crawling up his bones, thriving off him until he fall apart. She thinks maybe they both deserve each other. Maybe they are both broken beyond repair.

(His demons play well with hers.)

Her nails pluck at his soulmate tattoo, trying to pull the skin off, and says, "let's find out."

* * *

 **an obituary:**

They could have been so much more.

* * *

 **xv**

"Someone once said you have to look back five hundred times in your past life to meet again in the next one," in rare whimsical moments, Morgana traces the contours of his body, breathing spells and ancient religion on his skin, soaking him to the bones, "did you actually look back at me that much?"

Merlin answers without missing a beat.

"I did."

I did.

I do.

* * *

 **unsaid words:**

In dreams, in life, I have been waiting for you. You are not a missing part of me, you are one with me, ripped at the seams and dripping ink. Yellow sunflowers and hydrangea bloom on your path but there is blood under your nails and faded bruises where the rope bit into your neck. I have been waiting for you, for your stardust soul, for the familiar ache in my heart and the darkness in deep crevices of my soul and the sting in my eyes like acid burning, cobwebs and the darkest of secrets and pages upon pages of yellowed paper and golden threads of magic binding us together. I have been waiting for you, my mistakes, my fault, my favorite nightmare. My moonchild.

I have been waiting for you, waiting for the world to slide of its axis, waiting for the stars to realign and the universe to let me fix my wrong doing; for you to come back.

Because you are my favorite unfinished story. Because you deserve a proper epilogue. Because I love you, and despite everything, we can be so much more.

* * *

 **curtain call:**

Once upon a time, a girl meets a boy again, and destiny finally smiles.

* * *

Somehow I really find it hard to write for the Merlin fandom. My characterization is always... so awkward and off? And it takes so long to write this, like I have to practically force the words out. If anyone can tell me what is wrong, please please please say it. Thank you.


	2. tell me we're dead

**Rated: T because this contains vague(?) implication(?) about sex(?)**

 **Summary:** Everything Madeleine has done, up until now, has been her choice.

 **Author's Note:** Inactivity is me in a nutshell and I have no excuse for it. Other than my old laptop suddenly crashing down and I have to rewrite this from scratch. And that I'm kinda struggling with college application and moving abroad.

Oh wait. On second thought, I _do_ have excuses.

Another soulmates – reincarnation AU for you all because why tf not =))))

Do take the **warning** seriously though: This has references to prostitution, drug usage and violence.

Here, have a dose of angst and stay active my Mergana peers – I swear I will not let this ship die. It's kind of a testament that this fandom is just so small now that even _I_ am being thanked for writing… like it's at the stage where even trash will do

Edit 04/07/2018: This was previously one of my oneshots but now another chapter of this fic bc it's neater this way tbh

 **Disclaimer: I, I'd like to own Merlin. Just think of the Mergana potential =))))**

* * *

 _._

 _my ghost  
where did you go?  
what happened to the soul that you used to be?_

 _._

* * *

Sometimes Madeleine thinks Merlin is a hallucination borne from her singed, open wound that can still be felt centuries after she died and reincarnated and died again. Sometimes she thinks Merlin is in the inflammation on her abdomen that refuses to heal despite time washing by; the horrible horrible reflection in her dirty mirror glaring back with empty golden eyes, calling her a different name, _goodbye Morgana_. She thinks he is the same thing in her veins, she's got more heroin in her veins than blood and he is her drugs, stripping her off her sanity, what a curse, what a blessing; she inhales memories and coughs purges heaves blood vomit regret poison until her insides aches from the emptiness and she is hollowed out, fresh-faced and blank past.

Sometimes she almost believes Merlin is real.

* * *

There was once a girl born when the world was weeping around her: The stars in all the wrong places: Mars shining in a starless night, red in the sky and red all around her. Her mother screamed and pushed and grunted some more until her hoarse voice faltered and blood gushed out of her body. Demon child, the nurses would whisper years later when everything fell into place, she sucked the life out of her own mother, pushed and pulled and tugged until fate yielded, fell in her favors. It's a perfect sob story and Morgana is her own villain. Wild roses grew out of her fingertips and there is always matted blood on her eyelashes, perfect burgundy slick wet and all the blood on her mouth her lips her hands since she was born and even before that, all the dead, all the dying. Madeleine, they say, what an angelic name for such a temptress; rumors traveling further than the lady herself can ever do. Madeleine, silence spells out her name, beckoning her, darkness stretches out a bony hand with a golden branch extended, childe, sweet childe, singing and crooning such alluring words. My lady. You can be queen again.

* * *

When they asked her hesitantly, "why do you do this," and gestured vaguely, eyes blinking heavily and body sated, she'd love to wring every pre-formed pity out of those eyes and pulled sucked snapped. There is no fall from grace, unless you count the hundred years of denied rights, no sob story that pushed her here. Everything Madeleine ever does is her choice and hers alone, but everything before that, everything before _her_ was not – was pried out of her grasp, _despite_ it; back when she had a different name. But everything's changed now. Now, it doesn't matter what she does. History doesn't care about a dirty little girl born in slumbers, sweetheart.

(There is an exhilarating thrill in defying rules and doing what she likes just for the sake of it, consequences be damned, and she is free to breathe, for the first time.)

"Because I didn't have a choice before," she'd say instead, and they would assume

* * *

Magic cried for her, the darkness, the light that never was, the last pillar of a kingdom falling to ruins. Magic wept and cried and in the end echoed her life and her soul shattered like glass, sharp shards crumbling into golden dust and dissolving into light, soaking his mind. She touched his bones, weaved herself into his flesh, crawling in him, his body. What was left of her broke, cracks and lines run down bleached white skin, lips dried and dark and utterly dead. He watched her, eyes golden and hands spread, lips murmuring an incantation, friend and lover and enemy, sank lower and lower into the cold earth and life seeped out. If there was a lone tear on his cheek, nobody was there to witness it anyway.

* * *

And this is the part that they left out: he burnt you on a royal pyre on a sunny day, the sky pure and cloudless and sunlight carved sigils in the white of his eyes. Your body broke, incinerated, inches after inches of white skin charred into tar. He scattered you on a river, the same river that ripped off his brother in all but blood. Your flesh and blood fell apart but it was never anticipated that so did your soul.

* * *

The first time Madeleine saw him, he is little more than a figment of her imagination. Merlin is the dead and the damned in her dreams, his hands cutting off her air, her insides tore apart and liquid fire coursing in bluish veins. She wakes up scared and confused, sweat coating her skin, an alien name on her tongue and tears in her eyes. Merlin, the name rolls off perfectly, unused and dusty but fits in the roof of her mouth. There is something vaguely familiar in the arch of his eyebrow and his too-large ear, like a warning whispered in the back of her skull, like the tingling in her mind that fears darkness, like the too-detailed nightmares in crimson. Her fingers rub on nonexistent scars and she frowned.

* * *

The next few times are worse. Merlin, Merlin, she meets him again and regrets are there (but not strong enough for him to actively ask for second chance – not that she would have given him one anyway.) She meets him again and the not-strong-enough sadness eventually gives ways for hatred until he is a stranger she knows too well, until tears dry and salt evaporates, thickens into viciousness and the deep tang of blood on her fingertips.

She meets him again and fire burns them both. She meets him again and he never once pledges for forgiveness (and somehow that makes everything even worse.)

* * *

It's terribly unpredictable to see him _here_ , of all places. She has come to call this place hers. With its dingy atmosphere and dim lights and throaty, inviting songs, this is a part of her that has nothing to do with magic of all thing, with bruises under corset, dirty lace and ribbons and bite marks on her collarbones under layers of concealer. In these kinds of place, Merlin – Merlin with his awkward look and laughter and equally awkward looks – Merlin would stick out like a sore thumb.

(He does always stick out though, whether it's for his clumsiness or for the current of energy humming just under his skin, sizzling like oil and just demanding respect. It has taken her decades to realize this.)

* * *

For the next few days, she chose to observe him from afar. It's amazing what magic does to you: Time warps and bends everything to its will but he is the same, same young face, same antics: the tapping of his feet when he's uncomfortable, the blush coating his skin when a particularly bold girl places her hand on his knees and grinds her bottom against him (which is exactly why Annalise did that in the first place, she thought amusedly), the same low alcohol tolerance – surprisingly low for someone who's had thousands of years to practice and too many memories to drown.

His is a face she longed to forget. She has yet to decide if not getting this particular wish is a curse or ablessing, if this sparkling, unnamed ache can become anything important.

* * *

Here is a truth: She hated him.

* * *

There are a thousands way this could have ended. In one reality, Madeleine chooses to turn a blind eye on him, pretends she never saw, pretend she didn't remember, and they passed by, a dim spark never given a chance.

In another, she holds a knife in her hand, her grip just a little too tight. The blade wedges in his heart and his eyes blaze gold.

There are chances, and possibilities, and a thousand ways she could have made it different. There could have been poison in his cocktail – she can always mess with his next order; and the irony is just too delicious to pass up – there could have been a spell crawling up his spine, rendering him paralyzed; there could have been nothing at all. She could have chosen another path, but it doesn't matter in the end.

* * *

It's all about her choices. Wrong, right, regret, too late. But they are still _hers_ , see? They are, ultimately, a part of her, the way she is, the way she will ever be, each choice shaping up her, a part of her flaked off and projected for the world to see. Everything Morgana – _Madeleine_ has done, up until now, has been her choice.

* * *

The thought doesn't help her much at the moment.

(She can't help feeling like walking into a trap.)

(It just sits low in her stomach, heavy and uncomfortable, an inevitable mistake. Centuries-old memories screamed, _turn back. Turn back and save yourself_ ; her skin faintly pulsing where a scar should have been.

 _Turn back. Turn back_.)

* * *

The scene, Madeleine would later say, would be in slow motion, was this a movie. If she concentrates hard enough, layers of gold swirls will appear on where his veins should be, condensed time trickling inside him, making up his body. How can anyone be ignorant of his presence is what she wants to say. How can anyone ever be ignorant of him, she wonders. This kind of power that is barely concealed, that is just waiting to burst forth at any chance, at any slip of control; and tight as the grip he has on his magic, it just seems to leak out uncontrollably. Why doesn't anybody cower in fear and bow down to him, because he has every right for such a simple request. Merlin is a force to be reckoned with, a lesson she's learnt the hardest way possible. Storms and ice thread in his sinuses, spun into his bones like gold; and there are winds, there are thunders, there are promises unspoken and broken in him and that, of all things, make him big, larger than life, larger than death but still so very _human_ , and that of all things makes him terrifying.

* * *

She is not his soul mate but almost. Almost, perhaps, if the unsettling, once upon a time hatred can be erased, if given the chance, if taught how. The last two pillars of a religion no longer remembered, bound together with magic. Despite it.

* * *

He doesn't react at first. Surprise, she thinks, surprise. And then there is a damn broken somewhere inside, and it floods. A plethora of emotions rage in the white of his eyes, fury and disbelief and sadness.

A tiny flicker of hope, a traitorous, traitorous hint of relief.

He doesn't pull out a sword and stab her, so Madeleine will take that as a good sign. "Long time no see, Merlin." She plops down a stool – one of this place's many charms, she's sure, with its cracks and worn down leather and a not-very-assuring creaking sound when she sits down. They need to fix this thing ASAP.

"Morgana," he sighs almost inaudibly, "and here I thought you would be gone for good."

"Not Morgana," a flicker of surprise flashes in brown eyes. She licks her lips.

His eyes dashes upwards.

"What game are you playing this time, Morgana?"

"Nothing," Madeleine replies, "deception is not in my nature, _Emrys_ ,"

And if she takes a tiny bit of vicious pleasure at his abrupt departure, well, she's entitled to it, isn't she?

* * *

She doesn't expect him to come back. She doesn't.

(She does. You can only fool yourself so much. She hopes he will come back. She hopes he will prostrate and apologize. She hopes – she hopes –

What does she hopes for?)

He plops himself down and doesn't even pretend to look like a regular, his pointed stare glued to her back.

(He does the thing he knows best: He waits. He waits until night falls and customers file away. It feels too much like a confrontation.)

She is not ready for this. She is not sure if she ever will.

"Hello, Emrys,"

"Why are you here, Morgana," _right, no beating around the bushes then_. The frown on his face is weary, a thing too heavy and out of place on his face. Everything is odd, from his impatient voice to his face, too young to be right.

(She keeps forgetting that he is not _Merlin_ anymore.)

"Well, you know, when a man and a woman love each other very much, or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, or a man and a goat – really, J. , that is disturbing, and you call this _children_ books? – they take each other clothes off, go to bed and nine months later, there is a baby."

One thing that she is not used to see in Merlin: He is prone to exasperation – the product of a thousand years of solitude and near-madness and _I could have saved him_ jumbled in his mind.

"That is not what I mean and you know it."

"Yes, well, I am not Morgana, so your point is null anyway."

And of course, she may, might, possiby, enjoy this.

"What do you mean you are not Morgana?"

Scratch that. She _is_ enjoying this.

"Oh Merlin, you always know how to make a girl blush."

His gritted teeth are visible now, the sound of bones breaking.

"Fine. Fine! You want to play games? Let's play games then!"

It is possible, she thinks with thinly veiled disgust, for a person to age but to never mature.

"No, Emrys, I ask that you leave me alone."

Oh but they both can't resist each other, can they? This is proof enough, that after hundreds of years and thousands of lives and undercurrent of time, they did, do, and will gravitate towards each other.

"Not until you answer my question."

"You will waste time here then, I'm afraid." Madeleine turns away. "I don't know anything."

Streetlight patches his body into something whole, softer in golden light, the shadow onhischeekbones underhiseyes inhisbones faded to almost-dust. She can fall in love with him like this, she thinks.

Her eyes mist over unexpectedly, and she doesn't move.

* * *

Here is a secret: She can learn how to love him.

(If it's still you, and the magic is still there, but not the soulmark, does it still count?)

* * *

Morgana can see the future, time in motion and the constant hummingmovingturning of fate. Madeleine can only ever see ghosts.

* * *

He comes to her again, this time with melancholy in his hands. She is not used to this, she admits. The soulmark under his collarbone glistens.

Something heavy knots itself in her throat.

"It… was't right of me to push you like that," and it's the closest thing to an apology that she can ask of him.

The thing about betrayal is that it makes you doubt everything, shakes the foundation of your relationship to the core. It's a scar still healing.

She is tired, she realizes.

She is not Morgana.

(But sometimes she wishes.)

* * *

It happens.

They gravitate towards each other. He wants redemption, wants to fix her. He regrets. She can't be fixed, can only be undone. (You can't fix what is not broken.)

They both want to restart again.

He peels her clothes of, inches upon inches of curves and pale skin, unblemished. No soulmark.

Madeleine can feel realization finally settling in.

He starts to pull away, to apologize again – something else she isn't used to. She holds his wrist. Shakes her head. _Later_ , goes the unspoken promise.

His lips taste like something she can't identify; Madeleine ponders briefly.

They fold together until she can't tell where she ends and he begins.

It… happens.

* * *

"Why do you do this," he askes, fingers writing a language no longer spoken into her skin; and the coincidence is just too hilarious that she huffs, just a little. His brows draw together.

She strokes his hand, the touch almost comforting.

"You need to understand first that I'm not Morgana. No, Emrys, let me finish," hushes his protests into silence, "I really am not your Morgana. I have a part of her soul, that is.

"You remember when you killed her? No, don't flinch, I won't stab you. Not this time, at least. If I had wanted, you would have been dead the night you set foot in the bar. You really are just careless, you know?

"Her soul crumbled. A piece of it just… happens to make up mine, that is."

His silence is heavy. Madeleine tries not to feel like a fraud, like she has lied to him somehow.

"And how do you know?"

He is weary. Hopeful, still, underneath it all, a bit of doomed optimism slips in his voice. Please don't talk like that, it will make me hope too.

Madeleine brushes a fingertip against the name scrawled on his skin and feels something sinks.

"We both know I'm not your soulmate."

We both know I'm not the part of her that loves you.

* * *

"I love all of her," Merlin doesn't plead, but it's close. It's close enough that a primal voice inside her head laughs victoriously.

The words under her eyelids burn. She can read them easily, Hebrew and Latin and Old English, dead languages to match the dead in her dreams. She can see ghosts still, visions lingering in a dusty, untouched corner of her mind, an old box sitting in a dark attic. She can taste death on his fingertips, curling around his shadows like smoke, like fog, like home.

They are a perfect match, another hysteric part scoffs. Mad prophetess and ageless wizard and all the history between them, all the words, all the blood. Blood on her hand and blood in his mind. They can never ever erase them.

She can choose, she thinks, delirious with unfounded hope. She can unravel this like a thread and tangle them until they melt, until she is tightly knitted into his soul, until he drips of her at every edge, until _Madeleine_ is the only thing they can find when they rip into his bones.

* * *

But it's not her choice to make.

* * *

Madeleine swallows. This particular future is not hers to control.

"I am a large part of her, but I'm not the one that loves you," she repeats again. The words are firm. Her voice isn't.

* * *

And this is the darkest, deepest secret of all: To be Morgana, she has to love him, with or without the past behind her like a burden; and that Madeleine can't do.

* * *

He pulls her into another kiss, then.

"I can love you," shakily, unsaid and moon-shone, heady with ashes, _you can be enough. I can't ask for more._

 _Rose_ , the word pops into her head. He reminds her of rose ash, the smell of freshly burnt petals and fire and dirt. He reminds her of a graveyard untended.

Roses for a lover long dead.

He peers into her eyes, and the answer is clear.

* * *

Madeleine presses a finger on his heart and lips on his cheeks, touch as gentle as she can manage.

"Goodbye, Emrys,"

* * *

If she can choose, she will be fresh-faced and innocuous. Trade her prophecies for songs, trade this past for a blank canvas, and let herself adorn jewels without crying again. If she can choose, she will weave magic into the air and incantations into her skin instead of unsteady soul, and her name alone will remind her of him, the northern light to guide her home, to stitch her into herself again.

Rose, she decides. She will be Rose.

* * *

(Once upon a time, a girl meets a boy again, and destiny finally smiles.)

* * *

A year later and I _still_ don't understand how to maneuver these characters. Actually, my writing seems to go downhill? And just as I thought it couldn't even get any worse?

Review please because I'm a mess and need constant validation to not feel like a total worthless shit.


End file.
